“I feel right when I’m with you. I’m not imagining that. Do you know how long it’s been since I felt this way?”
Still Bennet says nothing, and my heart is racing. He doesn’t turn around. He can’t even look at me. Have I ruined everything? Oh, shit. Did he and Alli hook up after I left?
Bennet reaches up into the cupboard and takes out another bowl. I wish he’d say something. Why doesn’t he say something? In my nervousness I keep talking.
“After…what happened…I was so confused. And then Andrew was here telling me that he loved me and, even though that’s what I’d always wanted to hear, it didn’t make me feel like I thought it would. But still…it wasn’t like I could stay on the island because Calloway was home. And seriously, I was still mad at you for making such a fool out of me.”
“Babe,” Bennet says, drawing the word out slowly. He bows his head.
“What?”
He turns around and leans back on his hands against the counter. “I wasn’t trying to make a fool out of you. And I wasn’t trying to use you to get back at my family, either. Honestly, that thought never entered my mind until you said it out loud, outside March’s barn. And then I felt about yea big.” He makes a gesture with his fingers to show me how small he felt.
I bite my lip, wishing I could take that back. “You were right, you know. If you’d told me the truth, right when you saw Andrew’s photo in my bedroom, I probably would have run home out of guilt. Or obligation. Or maybe just fear.”
He stares at me for an eternity. My body temperature rises, and my clothes prickle against my skin.
“Come on,” I plead. “Say something.”
“D’Arcy.”
“Should I leave?”
He doesn’t answer that question. Instead he says, “All my life I haven’t fit in. Not with my family. Not at school. Not even here. That’s all I ever wanted. I saw that in you, too. I saw you working so hard to try to fit into a mold that you were never going to fit into. It made me crazy to know how unhappy your life was going to be. I was trying to show you another way.
“And then I saw that letter on your nightstand, and my little brother’s picture, and I thought, my God, it’s worse than I thought. After that, I wasn’t imagining you stuck in a type of life. I knew exactly what you were getting yourself into. I’d lived it.”
His speech makes my chest constrict because I can see his animosity isn’t toward Andrew. He sees Andrew as trapped as I would have been.
“The idea of you sitting there at family dinners…” He rakes his hands through his hair. “Knowing what kind of pressure they’d put on you to wear the right clothes, do the right thing. Hell, they’d probably dictate the spacing of your children, and God help you if you didn’t deliver perfect ones…”
“Okay. I get it.”
“Why did you leave without saying good-bye?” His face is troubled, and it’s obvious the question has tormented him.
“I thought that’s what you wanted.” I’m embarrassed by my answer. It sounds ridiculous now.
His face contorts. “Why would you ever think that?”
I look over his shoulder at the wall. Then I bite my lip and bow my head. “Because you didn’t come to check on me. I thought…I thought you might have blamed me for what happened to Sam… If I hadn’t—”
“Babe.”
“I thought you wanted me to go.”
He pushes off the counter and takes two steps in my direction. “But I did come to check on you.”
I nod and smile. He knits his brows, confused by my expression. He’s still trying to explain.
“That night, after I buried Sam, I came to you. Andrew answered the door. He said you didn’t want to see me.” He rakes his hand through his hair again. “Which, let me tell you, didn’t make me feel too great.”
“I know,” I say, smiling up at him. “He told me, but only yesterday.”
Bennet looks down at the floor and puts his hands on his hips. He laughs quietly to himself, finally understanding. When he looks up he says, “Aren’t we a pair.”
“So it would seem.” We’re still ten feet apart. It might as well be a mile.
“So you’re really here? With me? In my house? And you’re staying?”